Peter Henry Emerson

Born: Cuba, 13 May 1856

Died: Falmouth, Cornwall, 12 May 1936

Nationality: English


Works by this Artist

Gathering Water Lilies
Peter Henry Emerson, 1886

Studies

medicine at King’s College Hospital (1879, London); Bachelor of Medicine degree from Cambridge University (1885); studies photography while at Cambridge

Career

1869 – family returns to England

1883 – joins Photographic Society of Great Britain

1885 – founds Camera Club; lectures at Camera Club and Royal Photographic Society

1886 – retires as doctor to pursue photography; publishes Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, co-authored with Thomas F. Goodall

1887 – discovers photographer Alfred Stieglitz while judging amateur photographer contest

1888 – publishes Pictures of East Anglian Life

1889 – publishes Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art

1890 – publishes Wild Life on a Tidal Water and The Death of Naturalistic Photography, a pamphlet declaring photography a mechanical process rather than an art

1893 – publishes On English Lagoons

1895 – publishes Marsh Leaves; awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s Progress Medal

Travels

Cuba and the USA prior to 1869

Readings

Emerson, Peter Henry. Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art (1889). New York Arno Press, 1974

Taylor, John. The Old Order and the new: P.H. Emerson and Photography, 1885-1895. Munich and New York: Prestel, 2006

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